India’s Internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy

I'm not sure I agree. All liberal democracies have the tendency (and usually also explicit mechanisms) to transform into illiberal democracies. That's the whole point of a 'state of emergency'. Most dictatorships (including the Nazis) are inaugurated by a state of emergency, where some liberal rights are suspended. However, democracies also do this all the time - iirc, the US has been in a state of emergency since the 60's.

I also think human rights are distinct from liberal democracy - since liberal democracies predate the concept, and many liberal democracies (e.g. the US, UK) don't really abide by the UN charter in lots of ways, or don't have them constitutionally enshrined.

I think in reality, the line between well-functioning liberal democracy and scary dictatorship is really thin - and states cross from one side to the other all the time. For instance, Montana in the USA imprisoned people for saying anything against the US government in the first world war.

India has obviously been flirting with some scary ideas for some time, most notably with the treatment of Dalits and Muslims - but it's hard to see this as just a BJP problem. I think the BJP make the whole situation worse, but I just don't see how you could avoid this kind of thing in a normal capitalist democracy with extreme inequality and poverty. It's like in the US south during apartheid. The only way the ruling group could secure anybody's support was by convincing their poor white workers they had more in common with rich white men than poor black men.

Unless you neuter inequality, social divisions - caste, gender, race - are always going to be an easy way for the rich to ensure the poor don't join forces against them. So secular, liberal democracy in such a state is just a moment between various modalities of illiberal ethno-nationalism.